If death had come for them that night, Ryken would not walk into that great darkness alone.
“Arm whatever archers we have and station them along the walls,” she hissed at the sentries as she passed them. She strode out onto the bridge, her bare feet slipping on the nearly frozen dampness of the once protective bridge. With each step, she slowed.
Sedrak, the immense warrior beast, stood with his arms folded across his massive chest. Eyes closed, he muttered the same thing over and over and over, “Sedrak. Sedrak. Sedrak.” Like some perverse chant that would end in a fountain of blood if she wasn’t in front of him before he finished.
She came to a stop ten paces from him. He seemed twice as large, now that he towered above her, as what she had ascertained from the window. A great mane of black hair framed his bearded face, and his muscled arms seemed coiled with an unfathomable strength. Fear gripped her again, and her feet would move her no further.
Summoning as much courage as remained within her, she forced herself to speak. “I am here,” she said. Her voice shook as she spoke and she realized how weak it had sounded. The warrior continued to repeat his name, evidently unable to hear her raspy squeak above his deep, bestial chanting. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I am here!”
The warrior opened his eyes. His hands fell to his sides. His gaze locked with her eyes for a moment, and she forced herself to meet the dark orbs that flickered with the torchlight and a feral, predatory glint. They eyes wandered down her small frame with leisure, pausing at parts that caused her to blush. They stopped at her feet, and she thought the man’s lips moved beneath his rough beard to form an amused smile.
She shuddered as his eyes flicked up with a reptilian quickness to meet hers again. She had to tamp down hard on the urge to divert her gaze, anywhere, to anything, as if she could wish the monster away by refusing to look at him. “I am here,” she repeated, and the words left her mouth as barely a whisper, frozen to brittle rasps by the chill the beastly man sent through her.
She glanced at Ryken. He was slumped, lifeless, and she found an emptiness far more profound than she had imagined in the pale blue of his eyes. He did not return her gaze, or appear to even know that she was there.
The great man rumbled, “And who are you?”
Leola, who had been unconsciously sinking beneath the weight of the man’s stare, straightened. With the coward Trydar missing, she was the castle’s keeper. The fate of everyone within was in her hands, and she would not crumple like Ryken. Not yet. Summoning all of the nerve that remained within her, she managed to speak clearly, if not loudly. “Leola Grace.” When the man looked at her silently, she added, “A lady of these walls and of this realm.”
“Your father?” Sedrak grunted, pointing a thumb toward Ryken. His tongue was thick with an accent. Leola was hearing it now for the first time. She could not place it.
“My uncle,” Leola said, her eyes falling briefly to Ryken’s slumped form.
She swallowed and resisted the urge to stumble back as Sedrak closed the distance between them in three steps. As he loomed over her she was forced to look nearly straight up to meet his gaze, but not before she took in a long look at his forearms, nearly the size of her own thighs.
“Your uncle tried to steal from me,” the warrior growled.
She had to tip her head slightly to look at Ryken.
The warrior bowed his head lower still, so that his breath could be felt on her forehead, and her view of Ryken was blocked by his fur-clad mass. He smelled of animal fur, leather, musk, and the smoke of wood fires. For a moment the scent intoxicated her, surprising her with its pleasantness.
She forced herself to look back up at Sedrak, cursed herself as she felt her eyes grow wet. “I… I don’t…” she stammered. She cursed herself again for not paying attention at court, when Ryken made her sit and listen to his endless meetings. The formalities and speeches had been so boring. But how she wished that she had listened, learned the words used in diplomacy and negotiation.
For a terrible moment she felt as if all the words of the language had flown from her mind, leaving her mute. Her mouth made attempts at forming some, but then opened, a bit like a fish flung to the shore and gasping for water. “I’m… I’m sorry,” she heard herself whisper.
Sedrak raised an eyebrow. A wicked smile formed on his lips. He turned back toward his men, arms outstretched. “The girl is sorry!” he roared.
The crowd, which Leola had all but forgotten, burst into uproarious laughter. The sound stabbed knives of fear into her chest.
Heat crept across her cheeks, the sting of humiliation mixing with fear. In her chest a hard lump of anger was born of this combination: her temper, so beyond her control, had been awakened. Her cheeks were burned red with rage when Sedrak turned to stare at her again.
“Your apology is not accepted,” he said. The antagonizing smile waned slowly.
Leola didn’t dare utter another word. The beast of her temper was all she could control for the moment, and she was almost as afraid of it as she was of the giant before her. Say nothing, she warned herself. Say nothing or you shall be sorry.
“What was wronged must be made right,” Sedrak growled, when she stood there, silent.
Another moment passed, as Leola’s thoughts scattered like
